Tier 9 - Trail of the Crusader

[GeordieMagpie]

I didn't love it, but I sure as hell enjoyed it, fun raid, pretty small, nice end boss. Very nice gladiator feel (espescially in the dungeons)

[tennesseej]

Cause it was just to simple, thats kinda it OP. I think Simple is a good word to describe it. Granted boss fights was okay (Not counting 3rd boss, arena style, maybe it did fit inn the arena-themed TOC instance but meh).

I think that is a valid point, but in my opinion, it's not so simple that it's bad, it's just simple enough to not be as good as other raids.

I also really liked the idea of the Faction Champs fight. Sure it had tons of problems, but it was a new approach to a PvE fight, and it was definitely different than a council style fight. A lot of people complain that it is like a PvP fight, but I disagree. What makes PvP very different than PvE is not the number of people you are fighting against, but the fact that you are fighting against people and not the server.

A boss will never make a mistake in it's rotation, but it's rotation is intended to be beatable. A player can make mistakes, but a player can also get extremely crafty and beat an opponent who is superior on paper. In this sense, PvE is more like a puzzle, it's difficult but it has a definite solution, while PvP is more like chess, where you are beating the opponent, not their pieces. That is what makes Faction Champs totally unlike anything in PvP, and an interesting attempt to spice up PvE bosses.

[Adjusting]

I liked it because you could just sit in one place.

[drwelfare]

The dialog, events and fights made it feel like I was in a WWE Smackdown show.

[Nemah]

It wasn't my favorite raid, but I liked it well enough.

I particularly enjoyed tanking it over dpsing it.

[Nerraw]

I absolutely loathed the T9 set for warlocks. The raid I didn't mind too much to be honest.

[Megalithic]

I think that is a valid point, but in my opinion, it's not so simple that it's bad, it's just simple enough to not be as good as other raids.

I also really liked the idea of the Faction Champs fight. Sure it had tons of problems, but it was a new approach to a PvE fight, and it was definitely different than a council style fight. A lot of people complain that it is like a PvP fight, but I disagree. What makes PvP very different than PvE is not the number of people you are fighting against, but the fact that you are fighting against people and not the server.

A boss will never make a mistake in it's rotation, but it's rotation is intended to be beatable. A player can make mistakes, but a player can also get extremely crafty and beat an opponent who is superior on paper. In this sense, PvE is more like a puzzle, it's difficult but it has a definite solution, while PvP is more like chess, where you are beating the opponent, not their pieces. That is what makes Faction Champs totally unlike anything in PvP, and an interesting attempt to spice up PvE bosses.

If people didn't like the PVP feel to the faction champions, then it sounds like they won't like MoP. It seems like that is where they are going with the new "talent" system (making PVE fights have more of a PVP flavor where you use lots of different CC and utility abilities).

[Vook]

I thought it was perfectly fine.

But then again...

-I was relatively new to hardcore raiding at the time
-I'm too positive for my own good

etc. etc. I dunno, I remember not minding running it 4 times a week. My only disappointment is that my guild never killed 25-heroic Anub, even after like 400+ attempts on it. And looking back, the priest tier set WAS somewhat "meh".

[tennesseej]

If people didn't like the PVP feel to the faction champions, then it sounds like they won't like MoP. It seems like that is where they are going with the new "talent" system (making PVE fights have more of a PVP flavor where you use lots of different CC and utility abilities).

Yeah it will be interesting how the MoP talents turn out. Honestly I am really excited for them, the only really good argument against them is that you don't get regular bonuses while you are leveling. The way I see PvE CC turning out, is more like Phase 1 of the Nefarian fight (Blackwing Descent) where you might have a hunter lay down a frost trap or a mage do some freezing on the adds while you collect them. I don't think you will be CC-ing like you do in PvP.

[Projali]

Week 1: Northrend Beasts only
Week 2: Jaraxxus
Week 3: Faction Champs
Week 4: Mary Kate and Ashley part two
Week 5: Anub

Waiting 5 weeks to be able to clear it on normal was a stupid gate system, especially considering none of them were challenges on normal mode. Having to run 10 man on both normal and heroic as well as 25 normal and heroic and continue to do Ulduar for Valanyr fragments made our raid week really unmanageable.

Running 10-ToGC was mainly for cloaks and if you had someone disconnect, new, or make a positioning error? Goodbye tribute chest cloaks.

[Realsykes]

It's kind of hard to go from Ulduar...to ToC in terms of epicness.

[Aquinan]

ug i hated toc, raids are meant to be "long corridors filled with trash and bosses" standing in one spot for a whole raid was hella boring, plus aesthetically the t9sets were hideous

[Hoddie]

It's kind of hard to go from Ulduar...to ToC in terms of epicness.

I think that's the problem a lot of people have with it. TOC was released too early, many guilds hadn't finished with Ulduar, so were effectively forced from an epic raid into an average one.

[McNeil]

ToC and tier 9 still own DS and tier 13 by miles, so I wouldn't say its the worst tier.

People like to forget that ToC was just merely a raid to prepare you to raid ICC. ToC was never supposed to be very big or important and stuff, the entire patch was made to prepare people for 3.3

[Deleted]

Oh boy, where do I begin with my issues with ToC:

First off, I thought the concept was stupid: Prove yourself worthy to fight the Lich King. If ToC had been the starting tier, I could buy it. At that point though, in that expansion alone we had defeated a lieutenant of the Lich King, the aspect of magic, and the freaking god of death! What more do we need to do to prove ourselves? Why are 2 generic worms more powerful than said foes we defeated? How the hell did they capture these things? Screw the tournament, you should be sending the people who captured these things to fight the Lich King...

On top of that, the tier killed off Ulduar (the best raid they have ever made in my opinion) early.

Not to mention the location. Let's set up a happy, cheery renaissance faire in the equivalent of Mordor. Makes perfect sense. Ok, it was going to be in Crystalsong forest, but was changed due to the insane lag it would have caused. Still...

A very important part of raiding (and the game in general I guess) to me is the discovery and exploration aspect of it. Karazhan, Black Temple, Sunwell, Ulduar...so many excellent raids which were a joy to work my way through. There was none of that here, you'd basically seen almost everything the moment you zoned in. No exploring, the bosses just appear in front of you. A glorified Ring of Blood basically. It got slightly better when the floor broke and you fought Anub'Arak, but that alone wasn't enough. I also hate Dragon Soul for similar reasons to this.

Having to run the place once a week would have been bad enough, but at the start you had to run it four times a week to get the most out of your character.

Speaking as someone who has 25 man Insanity, the Tribute system on Heroic was one of the stupidest, most idiotic systems I've seen in the raiding portion of the game. How did such a poorly designed system get approved, especially following the negative feedback with similar stuff like The Immortal previously?

While it personally wasn't an issue for myself, the difficulty jump from Normal>Heroic was really badly thought out as well. Normal was similar to how LFR is, while heroic was...heroic. I feel really bad for those who didn't have what it takes to do heroic content, but facerolled normal with no challenge whatsoever.

Good things about the instance? Sadly, the nicest thing I can say about ToC is that it was over fast. Some of the weapon models were pretty cool, (though Tier 9 is easily the worst they've done) and I will admit the bosses were better than the bosses in Dragon Soul. (though I do think ToC is worse overall)
I'd like to think that the place would live on as a shining example of how not to design a raid instance, but we got Dragon Soul so I don't know really...

[mitbrandir]

I liked it for my alts. I liked to pug it on HC to have an challenge since i never raided actively in Ulduar or something. The fights were ok , but i really hated the drop rate on all trinkets , or some random person who is leaching win Death verdict/Reign etc , or it just being ninja'd

[tennesseej]

Oh boy, where do I begin with my issues with ToC:

First off, I thought the concept was stupid: Prove yourself worthy to fight the Lich King. If ToC had been the starting tier, I could buy it. At that point though, in that expansion alone we had defeated a lieutenant of the Lich King, the aspect of magic, and the freaking god of death! What more do we need to do to prove ourselves? Why are 2 generic worms more powerful than said foes we defeated? How the hell did they capture these things? Screw the tournament, you should be sending the people who captured these things to fight the Lich King...

Ahh, so there is an important caveat to the story that was missed here, that to me makes the story of ToC make perfect sense.

Basically, the leaders of the Horde and Alliance understand that sending a full army to face the Lich King is a bad idea, as soldiers in the army fall, they are raised as scourge to fight against that army. This means that you cannot defeat the scourge with a giant army, because as you loose soldiers the scourge gains them, and it cascades in the scourges favor.

They know they need to stop the LK, so they decide to send a team (of 10 or 25 heroes) and they need to ensure they have THE ABSOLUTE BEST 10 OR 25. So from a story standpoint, it's not about showing what you have done in the past, it's about showing what you can do this very minute. That's why I think the Faction Champs fight actually meant a little towards the story, because once you defeat them, your faction is solidified as the faction that will send heroes into ICC, you need only pass the final test (the Twin Valks).

The Anub fight is just the LK rubbing it in your face that he knows what you are doing and doesn't seem to care all that much.

[Sunseeker]

It wasn't great, at least not compared to Ulduar before it. Parts of it were a lot of fun, Faction Champions was IMO, probably one of the funnest fights I've ever been in. The Twin Valkyr was pretty creative and the Jaraxxus fight took some serious raid awareness. Everything else was kinda meh and the lack of trash made it all go really really fast, only emphasized by the fact that bosses came to you, instead of you going to them.

It was fun to run the first few times, but it got boring real fast. The fact that there was a single armor set(with a slight recolor) for each armor type also made the rewards rather dull.

[Zaelsino]

I liked how the esteemed Argent champions we spent a patch trying to emulate were all unceremoniously killed in one shot the moment we enter the Pit of Saron.

Wasn't impressed with TOTC.

[Inactivity]

ToC was a filler tier (and hence unimpressive compared to Ulduar or Icecrown), but for being a filler patch it beat the fuck out of ZA/ZG.